by Gwen Bristow
“Save it for me if it’s good,” said Eleanor.
Already absorbed, Kester did not answer, and Eleanor went back to her accounts. Kester could not keep accounts. Any mathematics beyond what could be checked on his ten fingers was beyond him. Eleanor kept records of the household and the plantation separately but with equal precision. In a passion for economy she had stopped the handouts from the kitchen; she knew how many pounds of flour, how many tubes of toothpaste and how many bars of soap they used in a month and bought accordingly. She also knew how much fertilizer had gone into every section, how much had been spent for wages there and how much they could reasonably expect as profit when the cotton was picked this fall. Kester said she was wonderful. He was as incapable of carrying out the fine details of a scheme as she was of originating it in the first place, and their mutual awe made them congenial as well as complementary partners.
Cotton was high this year. It was quoted at between twelve and thirteen cents a pound, but this price was unusual, based on recent devastations of boll weevils, and with improved methods of sprinkling likely to increase the general yield Eleanor thought it unsafe to count on so much, so she was calculating on the average price of ten cents a pound. At ten cents on this year’s crop they could pay for the improvements on the plantation (only a few matters of equipment that had been absolutely necessary, for they needed cash more than plows), send the interest to the bank and put by a sum against next year’s payment on the principal. If the price this fall should be more than ten cents they could buy tractors and four-row cultivators to do away with so much hand labor. But that, she reminded herself firmly, would be lagniappe and she would not depend on it.
She smiled now as she visualized the prospect. Tractors, cultivators, motor-trucks to take the cotton to the gin instead of these rickety wagons pulled by mules. She had begun this job with no idea of liking it; it was simply something that had to be done. But now that she was doing it she was engrossed. She had no emotional fervor for the land or the crops as such, unlike Kester, who felt that in saving Ardeith for himself he was protecting a beloved spot from the sacrilege of alien feet, but she liked taking an enterprise in her hands and feeling it grow and move under her direction. Her own work at Ardeith gave her a sense not of creation but of conquest.
“This is exciting,” said Kester.
She looked up, startled back into the present. “What? The murder? Read it to me and I’ll finish this after supper. Is it somebody in New Orleans?”
“No, better than that. It’s the crown prince of Austria-Hungary.”
“Good heavens! Where was it? Vienna?”
“No, in—” Kester spelt the word painfully—“S-a-r-a-j-e-v-o.”
“Where’s that?”
“I don’t know, somewhere in the Balkans. The fellow’s name is G-a-v-r-i-1-o P-r-i-n-z-i-p. They caught him.”
Over his shoulder she saw a three-column headline, “HEIR TO THRONE VICTIM OF ASSASSIN’S BULLET.” Kester began reading aloud.
“‘Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his morganatic wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated today while driving through the streets of Sara-whatever-you-call-it, the Bosnian capital. A youthful Servian student fired the shots, which added another to the long list of tragedies that has darkened the reign of Francis Joseph.’”
“Poor old fellow,” murmured Eleanor. “He has had a hard life. Go on.”
“‘On their return from the town hall, the archduke and the duchess were driving to the hospital when Gavrilo What’s-his-name darted at the car and fired a volley at the occupants. His aim was true and the archduke and his wife were mortally wounded.’ Now you may read the rest to yourself. It defies an American tongue.”
He gave her the paper, his thumb pointing to the next paragraph. Eleanor chuckled as she read, “Prinzip and a fellow-conspirator, a compositor from Trebinje, named Gabrinovics, barely escaped lynching by the infuriated spectators. Both are natives of the annexed province of Herzegovina.” She looked up. “I bet all the proofreaders wish the Balkans were sunk in the bottom of the sea. Look, Kester, here’s an article under the archduke’s picture saying that corn thrives well on reclaimed land, and celery should, too—do you know anything about growing celery?”
“I think we should stick to cotton awhile. Now that ours is beginning to bloom it’s really showing itself, and I’ve never seen better cotton anywhere.”
“But is truck-farming very profitable?”
“It can be. First you plant corn, and when you lay by the corn—”
“Lay by?”
“Hoe it for the last time, using a middle-splitter—when you lay by the corn you plant peas. When you cut the green corn you plant more corn. The second corn is used mostly for horses. Then you plant potatoes, and between the potatoes you plant shallots. When they’re dug in the late winter you’re ready to start the corn again. With five crops a year—two corn crops, potatoes, peas and onions—you make a lot of profit if you take care of the land.”
“I should think you would!” she exclaimed.
“Give me back the paper and I’ll look at that article you were talking about,” Kester said, then his face lighted as the door opened. “Hello! Who let you in?”
Eleanor put down the newspaper and smiled as she saw Cornelia crawling across the rug toward them. Dilcy stood in the doorway remarking that she thought they’d like to tell the little miss good night.
Cornelia crawled about from daybreak till dark, never tired. Eleanor had had Dilcy make her overalls of blue denim to protect her legs, and Cornelia wore white spots on the knees with her ceaseless explorations. She came across the room and headed straight for her father.
Eleanor watched with a wistful envy. Kester had some instinct about winning a baby’s love that she simply did not possess. She did everything that should be done for Cornelia with a smooth and loving competence, and Cornelia regarded her as she regarded the pieces of furniture in the nursery. Kester loved to perform offices for her and he did everything wrong, and Cornelia adored him with all her baby heart. Eleanor was ashamed that she could not help its hurting her. Kester did not think of it; he was only delighted that the baby had learned to recognize him. Eleanor looked on as he picked Cornelia up and swung her over his head and down again to his knees while she gurgled with joy.
“Dat’s enough, Mr. Kester,” Dilcy exclaimed at length. “You gon’ get dat child so upset in her mind she won’t get to sleep noways. Come here to me, little miss!”
“Let me have her,” said Eleanor. She took the baby and kissed her. “Isn’t she cute?” she said over Cornelia’s head to Kester.
Cornelia wiggled and held out her arms to play again. Kester shook his head. “No ma’am, you go to bed now,” he said, and Eleanor gave her to Dilcy. Cornelia was carried off protesting.
Kester looked after her proudly. “I declare I believe she knows she’s going to be put to bed and doesn’t like it. She’s a bright child.”
Eleanor pretended to be examining her ledger. “Yes, I think she’s going to be very clever.”
“Pretty, too, with those big dark eyes. She looks a lot like me, don’t you think?”
“She does, but I’m sorry to say I think she’s going to have my chin.”
“I hope she’ll have your figure,” said Kester.
Eleanor gave him a grateful smile. Kester had such a way of soothing her feelings even when he didn’t know they had been hurt. She hoped heaven would help her never to let him suspect that she was so selfish as to resent the baby’s preference for him. If I’m not a noble character, she thought as they went in to supper, at least I can try to behave like one.
After that she tried to fix her thoughts on the cotton and get pleasure enough from its thriving to make up for Cornelia’s infant worship of her father. The cotton was beautiful; it was beginning to bloom, and the fields lo
oked like a well-tended garden of white flowers. She read the papers, rejoiced that the price of cotton was still high, and agreed with Kester that the new heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Charles Francis, was certainly a pleasanter looking citizen than Francis Ferdinand with his ferocious turned-up mustaches. Encouraged by the cotton market, Eleanor dared to go shopping. She bought a few necessary things for Cornelia, and after a moment’s hesitation she thought of the cotton market again and yielded to temptation in the form of a black taffeta dress with the skirt slit to the knee and a cascade of white georgette falling down the bosom, and a black hat with three white feathers shooting up from the crown. When she wore it Kester gave her a long survey of admiration. “Magnificent,” he exclaimed, “and—” he waved his hand toward the blooming fields—“you deserve it if anybody ever did. If cotton is over ten cents this fall I want you to get a car of your own, and a black coat with a big fox collar.”
They smiled at each other in the pride of a job well done.
In mid-July the cotton blossoms began to turn pink. The weather was fiercely hot, hard on men and women but perfect for cotton, and there was not a boll weevil at Ardeith. In the most advanced acres the blossoms began to drop, leaving hard little green bolls on the stalks. Afire with impatience to see the open cotton blowing like flags of triumph, Eleanor could not understand when Kester began to relax his efforts. “What’s the matter with you?” she cried as she saw him stretch out in the parlor with the newspaper and a glass early one afternoon. “Are you scared of the sun?”
Kester laughed at her. “Eleanor, you’re just before working that cotton to death. Sit down.”
She obeyed unwillingly. He lowered the paper.
“Honey child, if you keep stirring up the ground the plants won’t grow. Between blossom time and picking time you only loosen the earth after a rain. Leave it alone.”
She was incredulous. “It doesn’t seem right just to sit, when I’m so impatient!”
“You’d have made an excellent helpmeet for one of the Pilgrim Fathers,” Kester remarked, “but the Pilgrim Fathers didn’t raise cotton.”
Eleanor yielded. The room was cool, the curtains blowing in a welcome wind. The wind brought a whiff of mint. “Kester,” she began.
“I told you I wasn’t going to get drunk,” said Kester. “I didn’t promise not to drink juleps when I had nothing else to do. Behave yourself, Eleanor.”
She began to laugh. “I’m a nuisance,” she said. “Are they really very good?”
“Pull the bellcord. There are three more in the refrigerator getting frosted.”
She sent for one and found after a tentative taste that she liked a julep very much. “What’s that big headline across the top of the page?” she asked.
“Train robbery near New Orleans.”
He had the paper folded so that she saw the top of the front page upside down. Eleanor idly began to spell the letters heading another story, “U-L-T-I-M- Ultimatum—to—Servia—”
“Quit mumbling,” said Kester. “I’m reading about the train robbery.”
“Gives—Scanty—Time,” Eleanor finished. “I read that upside down. What are they doing in Servia?”
“I don’t know. Isn’t there anything you can read upside down besides my paper?”
Eleanor leaned back, enjoying the delicious coolness. If it wasn’t necessary to pay such close attention to the cotton for awhile, there was plenty else to be done. Cornelia was outgrowing every garment she possessed. Eleanor decided to have a lot of rompers made for her, for she was beginning to toddle and her little legs would look so cute underneath bulges of starched pink gingham.
Cornelia continued to be the major delight of Kester’s life, though she was breaking his heart because she refused to talk. Eleanor tried to tell him it must be several months yet before Cornelia could be expected to speak a word, but Kester would not be convinced. He was trying to make her say “Father.” Kester did not like nicknames; he said a baby could learn to say father as easily as pop or dad or any other silly substitute. Between their cotton and their baby neither of them was much interested in anything else. Even when the paper flung at them a streamer headline, “Europe Trembles on Brink of War,” they got no more than half an hour’s conversation out of it, and returned to talking about the cotton. The next day, when they read “Austria Forces War upon Serbs,” Kester began to laugh. “I must say,” he exclaimed, “I think the Americans have a pretty right to be taking a holy attitude about Austria when you think what we forced on Spain not so long ago.”
“That one was rather fun,” Eleanor said, smiling at the recollection. “I was eight years old, and I wore a button to school with ‘Remember the Maine’ on it.”
“I did too. I was mightily excited and was furious at being too young to join the army. San Juan Hill, and Hobson’s Choice—remember?— and ‘Don’t cheer, boys, the poor devils are dying’?”
She nodded and glanced back at the paper. “I must say the Austrians have taken their own precious time about it. That archduke was killed a month ago.”
“You think everybody should be in a hurry,” said Kester.
The following afternoon they came in early from the fields, for the cotton was flowering magnificently and there was little to do but watch it. The sun was blazing, and Kester announced that he was going to spend an hour in a cold bath. As Eleanor came out of her own bathroom, glowing from cold water and talcum powder, she called across the hall to him.
“Kester, are you still in the tub?”
“Yes, and I’m going to stay here till sundown.”
“Do you want to read about all this rah-rah in Europe?”
“That’s what I’m staying here for, to have a cool place to read it. Bring me the paper.”
She took it to him and went into the nursery to pick up Cornelia, who had wakened from her nap and was clamoring for attention. As she plopped the baby into her own little bathtub she heard Kester calling her again. Eleanor shouted that she was busy.
She had Cornelia in her lap, and was shaking talcum over her and enjoying Cornelia’s interest in her own toes, when Kester appeared in the doorway. He had pulled a bathrobe around him and was holding the newspaper. “Eleanor, did you see this?”
“See what?”
Kester crossed the room in what looked like one step, nearly running into Dilcy, who was bringing out the baby’s clean clothes. He thrust the paper in front of Eleanor’s eyes.
She looked up and began to read. “‘Grim War Cloud Overshadows Europe. Austria Sounds Appeal to Arms against Servia. Kaiser Stands Firmly behind His Ancient Ally—’ Good Lord, Kester!” Catching Cornelia in one arm she sprang up and snatched the paper from him, for between a picture of Crown Prince Alexander of Servia and another of the French Madame Caillaux she saw a second series of headlines.
“World’s Markets Demoralized… . European Bourses … Wall Street … COTTON FUTURES SLUMP HEAVILY.”
Dilcy ran to her. “My Lawsy, Miss Elna, is somebody dead?”
“Take the baby,” Eleanor said mechanically without looking up. She was trying to read the article under the headlines. The only sentence she was seeing clearly was “Smart declines were recorded in cotton futures at New York and New Orleans.”
She lowered the paper. Kester was still standing by her, his hands in the pockets of his bathrobe, as though waiting for her to explain what she understood no more than he did.
“Come into my room,” said Eleanor.
They went in and shut the door behind them. Eleanor sat down, twisting the cord of her dressing gown. “What do you think?” Kester asked.
“I don’t know what to think. What has this archduke business got to do with the price of cotton?”
He shrugged. “All I know is what I showed you in the paper.”
Eleanor was tying the cord into a knot. Kester began to walk up and down, talk
ing uneasily. This might be only a temporary slump, he said after awhile; international complications always made the markets stagger. Talking about it cleared the fog of the first shock for both of them, and they grew optimistic. “After all,” said Eleanor, “this is only July. We won’t be ready for the market until September. It’ll probably be straightened out by then.”
“I tell you,” Kester exclaimed, “I’ll call up my brother Sebastian; he’s a cotton broker and will know what’s happening today—this is yesterday’s news in the Times-Picayune.”
She agreed eagerly. “Call him now. Do you mind if I listen from this phone here?”
“Of course not.” Kester almost ran downstairs. She picked up the receiver from her bedside telephone and listened while he rang Sebastian’s New Orleans office from the phone downstairs.
When Sebastian answered his voice had a tired sound, but his words were quick, as though he were speaking under a strain. He said cotton had begun to fall yesterday. It was still falling. In the world’s three cotton exchanges—at New Orleans, New York and Liverpool—the situation was tense; several millionaire brokers were already dumping large sums of money into the market in an effort to bolster the price. Eleanor fancied that Sebastian’s voice had a curiously familiar sound, as though she had heard it many times before, which was odd, for she barely knew him.
“But what on earth is the reason?” Kester demanded.
“Briefly, this,” said Sebastian. “If there should be a general war in Europe and their markets should be closed, this country would have to absorb the whole cotton crop, and we can’t do it. Normally two-thirds of it is sold in Europe. If that’s all you wanted I’ve got to hang up—we’re working like mad.” Eleanor gave her head a little shake as she listened. She had heard voices like that before. With an irrelevance that was somehow frightening she was reminded of a levee camp. Kester’s voice cut into her musing.
“But—”
“We’re hoping it’s only temporary,” Sebastian interrupted. “They’ll have to have clothes over there, war or no war. I’ve got to go, Kester.”